


songs don’t sound the same (without you in the passenger seat)

by bucketofrice



Category: Figure Skating RPF, Olympics RPF
Genre: 2+1 - Freeform, F/M, and some post-pyeongchang fluff to round it out, is that a thing?, like a 5+1 but shorter, some post-sochi angst, some post-surgery angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-10 19:17:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15955790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bucketofrice/pseuds/bucketofrice
Summary: “Driving on the highway homeThis time aloneDoesn't mean the same without youI turned on the radio, to something slowJust to let it fuck with my mood”// Three times Scott Moir drives from London, Ontario to Canton, Michigan (and back again).





	1. 2008

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! *waves* I'm wading a bit further into the land of angst with this than I've ventured before, so please bear with me. Scott just got a bit introspective and melancholy, I'm afraid.
> 
> Also, in case you were wondering: the drive from London to Canton takes about three hours and you can either take the 401 or the 402. Here, Scott chooses the 401.
> 
> Title and lyrics: "Passenger Seat" by Arkells.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's 2008, _Low_ by Flo Rida is topping the charts, and Tessa Virtue just had surgery.

**_i. 2008_ **

**_London, Ontario to Canton, Michigan_ **

From the moment Scott slides into the driver’s seat of his truck and turns the key in the ignition, he knows that _something_ feels off. Still, he refuses to place it for the time being, refuses to put his finger on the thing that’s making him slightly jittery in the seat of his pickup.

He refuses to confront the thing, because he knows doing so would require him to not only unpack the most obvious issue, but to peel back the layers of the proverbial onion and deal with all the underlying things that have gotten him to this precise place in time, under these exact circumstances.

And if he’s being honest with himself (for once), he sure as hell isn’t ready to confront any of it.

So, instead of letting his thoughts wander, he cranks up the sound on his radio and lets _Low_ by Flo Rida fill the air. A few beats in, he’s bopping along to the music, singing horribly off key about a girl with apple bottom jeans and boots with the fur (with the fur), and the nagging feeling temporarily goes away.

_Low_ , and the songs that follow it, end up being so effective a distraction that he manages to push the thing to the back of his mind so that he’s only confronted with it when he turns his head over to the passenger seat of the truck as he’s driving through Windsor. 

“Whatcha say, kiddo—one last Tim’s before we leave?” he asks, like it’s as natural as breathing, only to be met by silence and an empty seat.

Because that’s the thing he’s been so resolutely ignoring since he started driving down to Canton.

He’s alone.

Tessa is still in London, because she had surgery on her shins a day ago, and he’s the asshole who didn’t even come to the hospital to wish her good luck or be there when she woke up. (Even though he said he would, so apparently, he’s a liar now too.)

Instead, he’d made up some shoddy excuse for his mother when she’d asked him why he was still in his childhood bedroom, sitting on his bed with that stupid Maple Leafs comforter (not stupid, the Leafs could _never_ be stupid) and staring at the wall of skating photos and childhood medals like they were somehow out to get him. And, twelve hours later, he’d gotten the hell out of dodge.

Now, as he’s exiting the 401 so he can drive through Windsor and get to the border crossing, he’s forced to confront the fact that he’s alone in his old pickup, that Tessa is not in the passenger seat putting together a mental list of all the Timbits flavours they’re going to put in the box they get every time they drive to Canton.

(Her argument—which to him, makes perfect sense—has always been that food that does not fit into Marina’s strict diet plan for them doesn’t count if it’s purchased in Canada. And that there’s no way their coach will ever know they stopped at Tim’s, since Scott’s voracious appetite means all the Timbits will be gone by the time they reach the Arctic Edge, and they can dispose of any evidence along the way.

She has always been the smart one in their partnership, he thinks, but he’s also got skin in this game. Timbits are one of the few things Tessa allows herself to indulge in, and he counts it as a little personal victory every time she tells him she wants _both_ of the chocolate ones.)

A whole box of Timbits seems like an awful lot to eat alone, Scott thinks sullenly, passing by the Tim Hortons with little more than a cursory glance. Pretty soon, Windsor is in his rearview mirror and he dutifully queues up at the border crossing.

The line is surprisingly long for a weekday, and he shuts off the ignition on his truck as he prepares for the wait. Killing the ignition also killed the music, and with no _Yeah_ by Usher to keep him company, his thoughts wander.

Naturally, they drift to Tessa, drift to the fact that she’s probably lying in a hospital bed right this minute, confused out of her mind and angry. Angry at him, and rightfully so. And that’s if the surgery went well.

It _has_ to have gone well, he forces himself to think. There is no other option here, because Tessa is it for him, at least skating-wise. (And possibly more than that, but by god, he does not want to unpack that can of worms right now.)

It _has_ to have gone well because Tessa went under a literal knife for their career, for _him_ , let someone fucking slice open her legs with a blade so they could have even the slimmest chance of getting back on competitive ice.

The enormity of it—of what she is willing to do for him—is the most intense kind of overwhelming.

It’s probably a large part of why he ran, he thinks, because for all the emotional perception and intelligence he possesses, the decision Tessa had made was _not_ an emotional one. No, it was rational, and one hundred percent calculated. It scares him sometimes, how much she can compartmentalize.

Normally, Scott Patrick Moir is the kind of guy who boasts he has no fears (well, he’ll admit to one fear, but mascots are just plain weird, okay?) but this whole thing? Tessa, the surgery, all of it?

He is literally running for the proverbial hills, and he really hates himself for it.

The line at the border crossing has been creeping forward steadily for the past half hour, and finally, he drives up to the window. He hands the American border control agent his passport and paperwork, not paying enough attention to properly look at the guy’s face.

“Alone this time, kid?”

It’s Fred, one of the guys who’s been checking their paperwork regularly since they moved to Canton (when they still needed the letter from their parents stating that Scott was _not_ actually bringing Tessa to Michigan to elope, thank you very much).

“Yeah,” Scott says as Fred looks over his passport.

“Well, tell Tessa I say hello when you see her next.” He gives Scott a smile and hands back his papers. Scott feels like he’s about to throw up.

“Will do.”

As soon as he clears the border crossing, he turns the radio up full blast and stops thinking for the whole drive to his apartment. He is _such_ an asshole.

 

**_Canton, Michigan to London, Ontario_ **

He’s just leaving Canton and merging onto the highway when he realizes what day it is.

It’s two months to the day of the surgery. It’s been exactly eight weeks, and he and Tessa haven’t spoken once.

He’s smart enough to realize that he probably deserves to bear the brunt of the blame for that particular development. And it’s true—he was the one to leave without so much as a goodbye and it’s not like he’s picked up the phone to talk to her any time since. But the petty part of him still wants to yell that _she could’ve called you too!_ He quickly shuts it up, because really, he’s the one who left and he gets to carry the weight of it.

He’s the one who left her, the night before her surgery, through her fucking bedroom window, no less. He’s the one who left her after pressing a long, lingering kiss to her lips and murmuring “You’re gonna kill it tomorrow, kiddo. You’re the strongest person I know. See you when you wake up.” He’s the one who left her, scaling down her drainpipe like he was in some shitty romcom.

(He is ninety percent sure Kate Virtue saw him do it, too, which makes his attempt at a suave exit that much more pathetic.)

He was in her childhood bedroom because, and this he has to add to the laundry list of terrible decisions he made two months ago, he and Tessa slept together for the first time the night before her surgery.

It’s not like he regrets sleeping with Tessa—he could never, because he’s pretty sure he’s been at least half in love with her for over half a decade now—it’s more that the possible implications of it scare him shitless. Scared him so badly that he stopped talking to her and left the country and practised with a mop and sandbags, because despite everything, he’s still not willing to skate with anyone but Tessa.

Not that Marina had been satisfied with that. Or the exorbitantly wealthy parents of a whole lot of female ice dancers who’d tried to woo him, tried to get the _once-in-a-generation talent on the ice_ to try skating with their daughters. After the fifth flat-out refusal on his part, Marina had sighed, cursed in Russian and handed him the mop.

He has a distinct memory of Meryl Davis snickering in a corner.

Now, once again, the border crossing looms in the distance.

He hasn’t been back to Canada since he left two months ago, and for the first time in his life, he thinks it wouldn’t be so bad to stay in the States for just a little longer. He could keep up his carefully crafted game of avoidance, wouldn’t have to face his parents or Kate or his brothers—or Tessa.

The border control agent is way too chipper for his liking, and even the “welcome home” that normally fills his chest with pride weighs on him like lead. After a perfunctory _thank you_ , he leaves the border behind, dreading the inevitable merge onto the 401.

His mother called a few days before, said Tessa was finally ready to come back to Canton to ease herself back into training. She said it with a melancholic tone that Scott chose not to analyze in that particular moment.

Still, Alma Moir told him in no uncertain terms that he was to be the one to collect her and drive her back to the Arctic Edge—because “Scottie, you two need to _talk_ , and three hours in a car sounds like the perfect opportunity to do so.”

Which means now, he’s heading for Tessa’s parents’ house in London, trying to come up with a good thing to say that covers _I’m sorry, I was an asshole and I left you after we had sex and you had surgery and now we haven’t talked for two months and I can’t admit it but I missed you so much it hurt to breathe sometimes._

And even if he finds something appropriate to say (he won’t), he still has no idea where things stand between them. If she’ll even talk to him. There’s a pretty good chance Tessa will sulk for the entirety of the drive and subject him to the silent treatment. And he deserves it, there’s no question about it. But that doesn’t mean it won’t still hurt like hell.

For one of the first times in his life, Scott obeys all the speed limits on the 401, because he does not want to confront this situation any quicker than he needs to.

He does not want to talk about the sex, and the surgery, and the fact that he realized about three weeks ago that if she hadn’t recovered well enough to skate again, they could actually make a proper go of a romantic relationship. It had been the first time he’d even dared to acknowledge the possibility (because despite the sex, skating and dating don’t mix, and they both know it) and he’d been absolutely terrified by that fact.

To twenty-year-old Scott, having the woman of his dreams (yes, he dreams about her, and yes, he tries to chalk that fact up to anything but deep, undying love ninety percent of the time) in his grasp is like Dionysus with wine. Yeah, no, that is not a good path to go down. Especially not because she is fit enough to skate again, and the Olympics are in less than two years.

And, considering that he’s not even sure Tessa will _speak_ to him anymore, he thinks he should keep very low expectations when it comes to hoping she’ll agree to do what they did that night—ever again.

He tries the avoidance tactic that worked so well for him on the drive to the States—blasting Top 40 radio with his windows down—but the effect is ruined just a bit by his current adherence to Ontario speed limits and the fact that he feels like he might throw up any second now. Regardless of how you slice it, it all boils down to Scott having one hell of a lot of problems, and will have to lead to one hell of a lot of apologizing. He deserves it.

As he finally exits the 401 and heads toward London, his heart is beating a mile a minute. His last stop before he gets to Tessa’s house is a Tim Horton’s.

He orders three things: a double double for Tessa, black coffee for himself and one box of twenty chocolate Timbits.

It’s not quite enough of an apology, but it’s a start.


	2. 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's 2015, _Stitches_ by Shawn Mendes is topping the charts, and Scott Moir is realizing things.

**_i. 2015_ **

**_London, Ontario to Canton, Michigan_ **

When someone extends an olive branch to Scott Moir, there’s a very good chance he’s going to take it.

For all of his tendencies to get angry when anger is called for (and sometimes when it’s not called for at all), Scott has never been good at holding grudges. It fundamentally goes against his personality, which, on the best of days, is easygoing and kind, always considerate of those around him. On the worst of days… well, he’s had plenty of those in the last year and he’s determined to stop having them, so it’s late summer and he’s feeling charitable.

He buckles into his truck in his parents’ driveway, backs out and heads past the rink. A few turns later and he’s in London, driving through the city centre and waiting to merge onto the 401. It’s one of those days where he wonders why he so stubbornly sticks to the same route every time he drives to Canton (because surely, the 402 could be faster some days) but apparently, he’s a creature of habit and old habits die hard.

This particular olive branch had been extended by none other than Charlie White, who’d gotten married months earlier to the girl of his dreams and is, by all accounts, thriving in retirement, content with his gold medal and excited for the future.

Scott doesn’t quite know whether to be happy for his (former?) friend or pull his truck over to the side of the road and throw up.

He’s determined to feel charitable, though, so he goes with the former option, plastering a fake smile on his face that no one will see and dutifully merging onto the highway. The radio plays _Happy_ by Pharrell, and yeah, maybe throwing up isn’t such a bad idea right now.

Charlie and Tanith, (formerly Belbin, now White, which is a thing that still blows his mind just a little bit) had invited him to Canton for a long weekend and the guys are planning on catching a Tigers game.

It feels like it’s been ages since they’ve all seen each other. Even though, in reality, it’s been just shy of a year (with show commitments and all), he thinks it must’ve been a lifetime.

Sometimes, Scott thinks back to when it all started. To the junior circuit, to friendships forged by proximity and common enemies (Marina’s gruelling schedules and Igor’s technical drills), to friendly rivalries and four teenagers, just trying to figure out who they really were in a world that told them exactly who they should be.

It was a friendship forged by fire, between the four of them; it became vital as the years went on. There’s no one who understands what you go through every day, he thinks with a low chuckle, quite like the people doing the exact same thing—all in the hopes of being better at it than you are.

But really, they’d had a good thing going there for a few, blissful years. The quad leading up to Vancouver had been all about pushing each other to be the very best they could be; their coaches had divided up the attention equally. He and Charlie had genuinely been great friends, and he supposes Tessa and Meryl got along well too (if partially for the boys’ benefit). The Canton crew seemed untouchable, just them against the world.

Then, they won. Vancouver; gold on home ice.

It changed everything.

Friendly rivalries became fierce ones, loyalties were questioned, lawsuits drawn up, coaches made exits. Federations gave money, gave time, lavished attention. There’s a saying in ice dance that Scott remembers dimly as he’s passing through Chatham-Kent and Meghan Trainor sings _all about that bass, ‘bout that bass, no treble_ :

_Getting a couple to win gold two Games in a row means you’ve got good skaters; getting two different couples to the top means you’ve got a good coach._

And they’d all had a _great_ coach.

The 401 is surprisingly quick today, he notes, relishing in the feeling of the wind blowing in through the windows of his pickup. He sticks his left hand out and tries to catch gusts of air. When he’d first done it, he remembers Tessa’s petrified squeak from the passenger seat because _Scott, you can’t just drive one-handed!_ He could, which he’d reassured her of, but he still doesn’t do it much when she's in the car with him. He hates to see her scared.

But she’s not here now, she's probably still in England with her family, he doesn’t really know, and he’s free to stick his hand out for as long as he damn pleases. He thinks absentmindedly that he really should know where she is, since they’re both making more of a conscious effort to rebuild their friendship after Sochi nearly tore it apart.

He’s driving past the Windsor airport; the border crossing isn’t far away. Fred, the guard who knew both him and Tessa, is retired now, and Scott absentmindedly wonders what he’d think of their current situation. If, when told that Scott fell into a drinking spiral after getting silver at a rigged Olympics with inattentive coaches and a shoddy free dance, he’d shake his head disapprovingly or offer his condolences?

Though he kind of doubts he would, being American and all.

Would Fred have had an open ear and listened to Scott talk about Tessa’s _Year of Yes_ , about Ryan, the douche she’d started sleeping with, about the fact that she had all these _plans_ and for a while there, he hadn’t been able to remember how to get home because he was so plastered?

Would Fred have asked about his girlfriend, who is happy and bubbly and bright and shiny and uncomplicated and a breath of fresh air? And who, for once, doesn’t look like Tessa Virtue 1.5?

Would Fred have picked up on the fact that he seems happy and settled, but that really, he has no fucking clue what he’s doing anymore, that he’s just going through the motions?

Most likely, Fred would’ve made small talk about the weather and the Tigers and then given him back his passport and wished him a nice day.

He pulls up at the border crossing and hands his passport to the agent. Her name is Valerie and she mispronounces his last name before she asks why he’s crossing over to the States and whether he’s bringing anything illicit across the border. Scott shakes his head no, smiles when she checks his passport, and rolls up his window as he exits the crossing.

He turns up the Top 40 station once again, and wonders how a sixteen-year-old from Toronto managed to get access to the thoughts in his head that he’s been refusing to address for the better part of a year.

Because _now that_ he’s _without her kisses_ , he’ll _be needing stitches_.

(And those kisses aren’t Kaitlyn’s.)

 

**_Canton, Michigan to London, Ontario_ **

Screw stupidly happy, Charlie White is fucking _radiant_ , and Scott really would be infuriated if he wasn’t so thrilled for his (no longer former) friend.

He and Tanith are as adorable together as predicted, and Scott’s inner romcom side is rejoicing at the fact that true love is still out there somewhere, blessing people with relationships like theirs. All in all, the long weekend had gone surprisingly well, and by the end of it, Scott and Charlie were drinking beers in his backyard (just like old times) and Tanith was imploring them to eat something healthy in addition to the chips and salsa they’d acquired (also just like old times).

So it’s with great reluctance that he gets back in his truck and on the road after pulling Charlie into an old and familiar half-handshake, half-hug situation and giving Tanith a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

He waves out of his window as he pulls out of their driveway and thinks absentmindedly that they paint such a pretty picture, standing in the yard of their house, their dog peeking out of the living room window.

He thinks, as he leaves their neatly landscaped subdivision, that their current situation is objectively what he’s wanted all his life. And it’s technically within his grasp now—because of Kaitlyn.

Technically.

Something he'd noticed this weekend, and he supposes he could chalk it up to the fact that they'd all trained together at some point and the girls had been friends (even through Arctic Edge was petty at the best of times), is that Tanith had asked him about how Tessa's doing before she ever mentioned Kaitlyn. Who she’d then mistakenly referred to as Kate, which she promptly apologized for, because even though she skated for the Americans, Tanith Belbin is Canadian at heart and polite and good-natured to a fault.

He’d found a good segue though, telling them of Scotland and kilts and the highlands—a trip where _both_ Tessa and Kaitlyn had been in attendance. And if he conveniently left out the moment he and Tessa locked eyes across a crowded pub as Miku crooned in the corner, well, it wasn’t so much a lie as a strategic gap in the story.

Truthfully, that moment in Scotland had been like a lightning bolt to the heart, shattering the carefully-constructed glass case Scott had placed around his feelings for Tessa at the start of the season leading up to Sochi.

If he wants to be precise, it was right after they stopped skating Carmen, really. Carmen—which had caused them to fall back into the same bed for the first time since 2008. It was kind of inevitable, if he thinks about it, because there’s only so much you can do to prevent choreography that’s meant to look like oral sex from charging the whole rink with static.

And eventually, fuses burst.

So they’d fallen into bed with each other, but it wasn’t about _feelings_ , they were both very clear about that. It was just about fucking (with themselves and with each other).

The problem is, no matter how clear your intentions may be, boundaries tend to blur when the person you’re currently ‘just' having sex with also happens to secretly be the woman of your dreams—and you’re way too scared to admit it.

Carmen had come and gone, and with the Worlds title firmly out of their grasp, so had the sex. It was better that way. Besides, they’d had bigger fish to fry.

He decides it’s better not to rehash the entire ’13-14 season as he merges onto the 401 once again, aimlessly fiddling with the radio stations until familiar notes filter through the speakers.

It’s Rhianna, and he knows this song by heart, but all he can see is Tessa, asking him to show her something, and he’s daring her to come closer and then it’s two broken people on a merry-go-round of a relationship who can’t get off no matter how hard they try.

_Round and around and around and around we go_

_Oh now, tell me now, tell me now, tell me now you know_

He could change the station, spare himself, but he forces himself to listen to the whole thing. Forces himself to relive that exhibition in its entirety, because apparently, he developed a slight masochistic streak somewhere along the way.

The last notes leave him with a kind of clarity he hasn’t felt for months now.

He wants what Charlie has—the wife and the dog and the house—but he doesn’t think he wants it quite yet. And he doesn’t think he wants it with Kaitlyn either.

There’s one thing he wants now, he realizes with perfect clarity on the 401 in July—to skate with Tessa. Skating with her is the one thing that has always made sense in his life. Regardless of everything happening around them, once his blade hits the ice and his hand finds hers, nothing else matters.

And it’s a feeling he craves, every single day.

He doesn’t think he’s quite ready for the house and the wife and the white picket fence, but he does know he misses the rink, cold and biting and _home_. Misses the singular focus, misses honing a skill; hell, he wouldn’t even complain about the hours and the meal plans.

(There’s a small part of him that also wants a chance to do it all again, on their own terms. To control the training, control the narrative, to work for one another, and no one else. And another part of him just wants another gold.)

Mainly though, he misses Tessa, misses her like a lost limb. He misses connecting with her on the ice, where no one else matters, just the two of them in their little universe, oblivious to the outside world.

This time, he can’t even be mad as the radio switches to _Happy_ again. He exits the 401 with a plan forming in his mind.

There are three years to the Olympics… and isn’t the third time supposed to be the charm?


	3. 2019

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's 2019, _You Make My Dreams_ by Hall  & Oates is still a classic, and someone is getting married.

**_\+ i. 2019_ **

**_London, Ontario to Canton, Michigan_ **

He leaves the house in London at precisely seven o’clock. Earlier that morning, he had filled his thermos with coffee (the good kind from the Nespresso machine Tessa had introduced him to when they first moved to Montreal), and now he grabs his duffel, puts on a baseball cap and heads out the door.

As he buckles into the driver’s seat of his (now old) truck and turns on the radio, he feels a wave of familiarity wash over him. He hasn’t made this particular drive in years, and yet, he thinks with a wistful smile, some things never really change.

Pretty soon, he’s on the road again, following the same street signs in London ‘til he hits the bigger streets and eventually makes the old, familiar merge onto the 401. He relishes in the feeling of the wind blowing through his windows again, as the sounds of whatever Top 40 radio station he landed on fill the air.

It’s the same as it’s always been—except this time, he doesn’t feel the need to crank up the radio to full blast and shut out his thoughts, doesn’t stick his hand out the window just because he can. Instead, he listens to Ed Sheeran sing about _the shape of you_ and laughs when he thinks back to Stars on Ice the previous year.

Sometimes he still cannot believe they did _that_ in front of all of Canada, the CBC and their _mothers_. Not to mention all the children. He still owes Jeff Buttle half a lifetime’s worth of beer.

Ed Sheeran stops singing about bedsheets and the station starts playing commercials. Scott turns down the volume and wakes up Siri with a gentle _hey_. (He is _not_ the type to text or use his phone while driving, thank you very much; it remains safely in the cupholder in the centre console and is only activated by voice command.)

“Call Tessa Virtue,” he says, and listens to the line ring. When it connects, he can’t help the corners of his mouth from quirking up into a smile.

“Hi,” he hears through the speakerphone. She sounds sleepy still, like she hasn’t quite had the requisite two cups of coffee and is thus only partially part of the human race. “You driving already?”

“Yeah, I’m on the 401 right now.”

She hums, and he can picture her perfectly, all sleepy eyes and mussed hair and small yawns she tries to hide behind her hand. She’s in Ottawa for a sponsor meeting, but she’s flying to Canton in a few hours and meeting him there. “It’s weird not being in the car with you,” she says, voice low, and it pulls at his heart-strings. Because yeah, it is weird. They’ve shared in this drive countless times and it feels wrong, somehow, to be doing it without her.

“I’ll see you this afternoon, kiddo,” he says instead, a little bit too cheerily because yes, it’s only been two days, but he misses her. So fucking much. “I miss you,” he tacks on, because he’s a desperate idiot and not ashamed to admit it.

He knows she’s smiling when she repeats it back, and then there’s a beat of silence between them.

“T?” He knows he’s going to get absolutely nowhere with this ask, but hope springs eternal and damnit, he’s gonna try. And put on his best puppy dog eyes as he’s doing it. (Even though he knows full well Tessa cannot see them. But maybe she’ll be able to _feel_ them through the phone.) “Do we _have_ to go?”

“Scott! We accepted the invitations months ago!”

“I know…” He drags out the word with a whine and if Tessa were in the car next to him right now, she’d be shooting him a look that said _I told you so_ in no uncertain terms. “But think about it: you, me, a secluded cottage by a Great Lake?”

“It’s February!”

“Fine. You, me, a nice mountain resort with plenty of spa treatments?”

“Scott! _You_ were the one who said we absolutely had to go! I was ready to make the excuse, get something off the registry and forget this was even happening. But no, you had to bring up Charlie, and Tanith and his baby and the dogs…”

(She’s correct, as she nearly always is. He _had_ been the one to fawn over the dogs, and Charlie’s kid, and the fact that he missed his friend. And so, sitting on the couch with Tessa, he’d given her his best puppy dog eyes and clicked _accept_ on both their invitations.)

“I know, I know.” He switches lanes on the 401, anticipating the upcoming exit into Windsor. “I just never saw myself seeing Meryl Davis getting married. Ever.”

He hears a cackle from the other end of the line and he grins because Tessa sure as hell didn’t anticipate this either. The invitations (plural, because it’s Meryl Davis and they’re convinced she knows they’re together but is making a point for pettiness’s sake) were a surprise to them both, and now, three months later, they’re headed back to Canton one more time.

He’s still not quite sure what motivated her to invite them, but hey, if it’s an excuse to see Charlie and Tanith and their kid (and catch up with a gaggle of other skaters) he’s all for it.

“Hey, I gotta go, we’re having a meeting over breakfast. I’ll see you tonight. Love you.”

“Have a good time. Love you too,” he says back, smiling at the thought of seeing her again in a few short hours.

“Oh, and Scott,” Tessa says, and he can _hear_ the smirk in her voice, which has adopted a singsongy lilt. “ _Fedor_ is getting married too.”

The line clicks and then it’s silent in his truck.

_Well fuck._

He knows Meryl is getting married to Fedor, thank you very much, but he also distinctly remembers all the teenage years he spent with the guy in close quarters at the rink, the way he called him _Scottie_ even though he hates it, that Marina had insisted he be a fucking ‘footwork coach’ even though he did nothing to earn that title.

And most of all, Scott remembers Fedor dating Tessa, and the fact that he hadn’t handled it well. At all.

He knows that if she’d said this a few years earlier and hung up on him, he’d currently be stewing in the car, working himself into a rage. He knows he wouldn’t have the years of therapy under his belt that have gotten him and Tessa to this place in their relationship—where they can joke about Fedor and accept the past for what it was.

So, instead of working himself up over this, Scott calmly queues up at the border crossing instead, and when the agent—a new guy named Chris—asks him what he’s planning on doing in the States, he answers “celebrating the wedding of two old friends” with a genuine smile.

 

**_Canton, Michigan to London, Ontario_ **

“Ready to go home?” he asks, looking over to the passenger seat with a smile as he watches Tessa rub sleep from her eyes. She nods and buckles in, pulling her coat tighter around herself and cranking up the heat. Leave it to Meryl Davis to celebrate her wedding in the middle of winter.

Scott drives through Canton and they spend the first few minutes in companionable silence as Tessa reacquaints herself with the sensation of being awake. She’s curled into the seat and Scott steals glances at her every few minutes, smiling at the adorable way her brow furrows as she concentrates on sipping her coffee when he’s rounding a bend.

He fiddles with the radio and eventually lands on the oldies station she programmed into his stereo years ago, when they still lived in Canton. He remembers his annoyance when he realized she erased a sports station in the process, but her puppy dog eyes (Tessa Virtue is just as capable of those as he is) made him keep the preset and he’d occasionally listen to it with her on drives like these.

Now, _You Make My Dreams_ starts playing at the tail end of a commercial break and he can’t help but chuckle. Of course.

But then, Tessa lights up in the passenger seat and starts singing along off key and any thoughts he had about protesting or switching the station fly right out the window as a grin spreads across his face. He missed this, so much, missed this drive with her and his truck’s crappy radio reception and the damn lines at the border crossing and the fact that she insisted on playing _Inside the Actor’s Studio_ way too many times.

_Well, well you_

_You make my dreams come true_

She points at him when she sings it and he laughs, because he’s a damn lucky bastard and Tessa is currently using a Starbucks cup as a microphone and it’s cute as hell. He wants to kiss her, so badly, but that is a terrible idea because he’s driving, so he settles on squeezing her hand instead.

“For the record,” he says, as the song winds down and she (mercifully) goes back to Top 40, “you make my dreams come true too.”

They cross the border without a hitch, and thank the agent who tells them his daughter is a huge fan of theirs, right after the requisite “welcome home.” It’s still so odd that they get recognized now, that people care and it’s been a year since the Olympics, but Scott thinks that if he and Tessa can get some more kids across Canada to believe in the power of hard work and determination and help them pursue their dreams, well, he’ll happily take some selfies along the way.

As soon as they leave the border, Tessa starts listing off Timbits flavours and Scott laughs. Predictable as always. He pulls into the drive-through for a double double, a black coffee and a box of ten (because as much as they still work out, they’re not twenty anymore) and then Tessa goes about the task of determining the exact optimal order in which to eat her share.

Which, for the record, is this: chocolate, blueberry, glazed, apple fritter, chocolate.

Scott just grabs random ones and eats them in whichever order they happen to be in.

He merges onto the 401 just as Drake plays on the radio and he realizes they met him last year. At a fucking Raptors game. As if she was reading his mind, Tessa bursts into laughter. “I think that was the most nervous I’ve seen you, ever,” she says, still giggling.

“Speak for yourself, Miss Heart-Eyes.”

“Touché.”

Tessa hums along to the radio for a little bit and he can see her out of the corner of his eye, deep in thought as she sips on her double double. “You know, it’s strange…” she starts, and her voice has taken on a tone that he’s not entirely sure he’s prepared for. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to a wedding where I’ve seen the groom naked before.”

Scott’s head whips around at lightning speed and he’s a bit concerned he’s going to injure himself—or drive straight off the highway and into a ditch—before he grips the steering wheel tighter and gets them firmly back in their lane. “Why would you—” he splutters, “I…my brain did not need that image! T! Why?”

She’s cracking up in the seat next to him at that point, and he finds it very unfair that she’s doing this to him when he can’t even retaliate by tickling her. It’s one thing to joke about Fedor, it’s an entirely different thing to picture him and Tessa—naked. It’s a mental image he desperately wants to un-see.

When she calms down and takes a deep, steadying breath, she gingerly places her hand on his arm. “Hey, the next wedding where I’ll know what the groom looks like naked will be ours.”

He glances at her and she’s smiling softly and he momentarily forgets that she essentially just scarred him for life. “Yeah, it will.” If he beams and his chest puffs with pride, well then sue him.

He asked the question (though it was never really a question, more of an inevitability) a few weeks ago, and he’s been practically bursting with giddiness ever since. Their families know, their friends know, and soon, the world will know too (because a diamond on a ring finger really is a definitive label for a relationship, they’ve gotta agree with that) but right now, it’s their little secret and they’re thrilled.

“Babe,” he says, reaching for her hand again across the centre console. “I think Marina is onto us.” Their former coach had been giving him odd looks all throughout the reception, and he’s positive she muttered something like _It’s Carmen lift, in real life_ under her breath when she saw them dance last night.

Tessa just hums and reaches over to take his hand again and he feels the cool metal of her engagement ring (which she’d put back on in the morning). “I mean, you weren’t exactly _Mister Casual_ last night, Moir. Pulling me behind the topiary in the ballroom? Not subtle.”

He has to laugh at that, because it’s true, and he squeezes her hand.

“Hey! You were a willing and eager participant!”

She chuckles and he thinks back to the way she’d pressed up against him and fisted her hands in his hair. _Very willing._

He exits the 401 and pretty soon they’re entering London, taking familiar turns on streets he’s driven countless times. As he pulls into the driveway of Tessa’s (their) house, he wonders if this is the last time he’s ever going to do this, finish the drive from Canton and park his truck after those same three hours on the road.

“I’m so glad we’re home,” Tessa mumbles from the passenger seat, her trip having finally taken a toll on her body. Scott looks over at her with a fond smile and strokes her cheek with his thumb.

If this is the last drive from Canton, he thinks, he’s so glad he got to spend it with her and end it here, with their whole future in front of them. He got to drive her _home._

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make my day. Feel free to yell at me here, or on Tumblr, @good-things-come-in-threes, or Twitter, @_bucketofrice.


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